The End of the Odyssey

§0. This essay began with an invitation to participate in a conference at Vassar College in early April 2020. As the world knows, everything planned for that date was upended by the Covid-19 pandemic. The conference, organized by Gwenda-lin Grewal, was set to consider quotations and misquotations of Homer in Plato. As a Homerist rather than a Platonist I chose a subject that would allow me to think about a problematic book of the Odyssey, its last book. In Republic III, 387 A 5 Socrates cites lines 6–9 of Book 24 as one of the passages that should be excised from Homer as unfit for the ears of future guardians of the state. The passage describes the descent to Hades of the slain suitors with a simile comparing the suitors’ ghosts to gibbering bats—not an image calculated to dispel the fear of death and inculcate bravery in the ideal state. The Homeric scholia state without further comment that two Hellenistic scholars, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace, put the end of the Odyssey at Book 23 line 296. This abrupt notice, found in two slightly different forms in the scholia, seems to mean that according to these two Hellenistic scholars the end of Book 23 and all of Book 24 were added later to an originally shorter poem. This idea has not ceased to cause controversy among Homeric scholars. In terms of my projected participation in Poughkeepsie, the question to be considered was whether what Plato found objectionable was actually by Homer, as Plato would surely have thought, or by a later continuator. My conclusion is that that passage, and the Second Nekyia as a whole, belong to the original Odyssey; the impact of this conclusion on Platonic studies will be, to say the least, not great. But I have greater ambitions with respect to Homeric studies, where the real questions about Book 24 come not at its beginning, but at its end—its final scene. My initial ideas on the subject, worked up for presentation at the conference, took only a month to prepare. I have spent more than a year since then on what has become, for me, an engaging project. Papers written for the conference that could not be delivered at the time are being published on the CHS website, and I am honored to have mine among them. [1]

§1. The last scene of the Odyssey is problematic, even for those who defend it as genuinely Homeric. [2] The battle with the relatives of the slain suitors ends as soon as it begins when Laertes, restored to youthful vigor by Athena, kills a single victim, and Athena calls a halt to further bloodshed. Awestruck by the goddess’s presence the suitors’ relatives quit the field and peace is established. The problem of a blood feud threatening to engulf Odysseus and his household has been raised and as quickly dismissed. A divinity with a commanding voice is the answer to the problem of reciprocal violence. [3]

§2. The notices in the Homeric scholia that Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus put the end of the Odyssey at Book 23.296, if taken at face value, mean that the poem once ended with the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in their marriage bed, without thoughts of bloody-minded relatives of the suitors to disturb their happiness. [4] This accords with the view of some that concern with the problem of reciprocal violence did not arise before the rise of the Greek polis, subsequent to the creation of the Odyssey. The “continuation” of the poem, from 23.297 on, would thus have been added only when a new sensibility reflecting the values of the polis had arisen and necessitated a reckoning, however perfunctory, with the problem of revenge. [5]

§3. The poem before 23.296 admittedly betrays some concern for the threat posed by the suitors’ families but not a great deal, and the passages in question have been taken as supporting both the presence and the absence of the final scene of the poem. [6] Two of the four passages in question occur early in the poem: in 1.378–380 Telemachus says to the suitors, “I will call out to the gods who are forever that Zeus grant me vengeance; you would then perish unavenged in this house;” [7] in 2.143–145 Telemachus repeats these words in the Ithacan assembly, and Zeus sends a pair of eagles to sanction his prayer (2.146–154). Telemachus has prayed that the suitors perish νήποινοι, “unavenged.” There is indeed recognition in this word that vengeance is an issue, but there is also the strongest indication that vengeance will not apply in the case of the suitors: the suitors will be νήποινοι, ‘unavenged’, if Telemachus’ prayer is answered. [8] Zeus’ two eagles, which attack the center of the assembly, tearing at the cheeks and necks of the assembled Ithacans, make it publicly and painfully clear that his prayer will be answered. [9] The Ithacans have been put on notice that the suitors with their current behavior are no better than criminals in the eyes of the king of the gods.

§4. In 20.41–43, as the slaughter of the suitors draws on, Odysseus, worrying that the suitors outnumber him, expresses this worry to Athena, and then adds an even greater worry: “if, with your help and that of Zeus, I kill them, where can I flee for safety?” [10] This passage is interpreted differently according to one’s view of the final scene of the poem: it is either a “plant” looking forward to that final scene, or it is like the passages in Books 1 and 2, which recognize that vengeance is never not a potential issue but dismiss it in the case of the suitors’ murder. [11] Athena’s response to Odysseus’ anxious questions is that he has her at his side to defend him and thus no reason to worry about being outnumbered. Her statement is emphatic, but it does not explicitly address what Odysseus calls his greater worry, his escape. [12] That, we are to understand, will also not be a problem.

§5. In contrast to the first three passages, which do not entail the final scene of the poem, at least not necessarily, the fourth passage, 23.111–140, is unambiguously a “plant,” and must therefore have entered the poem together with the poem’s final scene if that scene was added secondarily. With the suitors now dead Odysseus speaks explicitly to Telemachus about the danger that they face from the suitors’ kinsmen. [13] He devises a plan to appear to hold a wedding inside the palace to prevent word of the suitors’ slaughter getting out to the city before Odysseus and his band retreat to the country, where they will take thought for what comes next. [14]

§6. Little in the Odyssey requires the issue of reciprocal violence to be played out at the end of the poem. Apart from the plan devised by Odysseus in Book 23, [15] which goes strictly with the poem’s final scene, the overall impression left by the poem is that the suitors are beyond redemption, and that both Zeus and Athena intend them to suffer a fate that they beyond question deserve. [16] None of the suitors is spared, and when two other figures in the palace are spared, the herald Medon and the poet Phemios, the reason is their “good conduct” (εὐεργεσίη), in contrast to the “bad conduct” (κακοεργίη) being punished all around them without remorse. [17] Odysseus, in the Odyssey’s own terms, seems to have no more responsibility—no more bloodguilt—for the fate of the suitors than he does for the fate of his companions on their return from Troy. In both cases it was their own fault that brought the victims down. In the case of the companions, the Odyssey makes this clear in the poem’s opening passage: despite Odysseus’ efforts to save them “they perished by their own recklessness” (αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο, 1.7). The only passage in which Odysseus is charged with responsibility for the failure to bring his companions home from Troy is in the final scene of the poem, where Eupeithes, the leader of the suitors’ kinsmen, links this failure with the death of the suitors. [18] The Odyssey clearly exculpates Odysseus in both cases. While we may consider Odysseus culpable according to our own lights, the Odyssey does not do so.

§7. If the Odyssey itself seems to require no more accounting from Odysseus for the death of the suitors than it does for the death of his companions—if the final scene, that is, serves no necessary narrative purpose— what follows from that? I agree with the idea that the final scene arose secondarily in post-Homeric times. I do not agree, however, that this means that the poem originally ended at 23.296. I will come back to what I understand “post-Homeric times” to mean in this case, and to where I see a concern for bloodguilt as demanding attention, namely in late seventh- and early sixth-century Athens. But first I wish to make a case that the Odyssey always had twenty-four books, and that the termination of the poem in Book 23, as reported by Aristophanes and Aristarchus, should not be taken at face value. In brief, I suggest that the Homeric Odyssey, which did not have the final scene of our Odyssey, had a different final scene which was replaced in Athens. What that scene was may seem an unanswerable question, but perhaps not entirely so. Leaving that point aside for now, if we grant that the process itself is possible, we may also envision that the transmission of the Odyssey went through an uncertain phase where performance of the poem, in Athens, did terminate in Book 23, before adjustments were made to Book 24 to produce the Odyssey that we now have. [19] Such adjustments, which were intended to address the problem of bloodguilt in the final scene of the poem, would also have affected what I regard as the heart of Book 24, namely the reunion of Odysseus with his father. Parts of that reunion remain intact in Odyssey 24, but they have been distorted by the need to have Laertes participate in the final battle with the suitors’ kinsmen. Here too we will be unable to recover fully what has been lost. On the other hand, a jewel of Book 24, the so-called Second Nekyia, did not suffer such distortion. In my view it was always part of the Odyssey’s last book.

§8. I have developed the case that the Iliad and the Odyssey were created together in their monumental form in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC at the festival of the Panionia in Asia Minor. [20] What we have now, essentially, are the two poems as they were created in Ionia but were then fixed a century and a half later in Athens in a somewhat altered form that was to serve as a state text to control the poems’ performance at the festival of the Panathenaia. [21] Rhapsodes at the Panathenaia took turns to perform the poems in orderly succession. [22] What may have occurred a century and a half earlier at the Panionia is of course undocumented, but it is reasonable to extrapolate from the later Athenian festival and to imagine several poets from the several Panionian cities as performers of the poems. At a regularly recurring festival it would have been possible for such performers, who as oral poets composed while they performed, to collaborate with each other if circumstances called for such collaboration. In my view the formation of the Ionian dodecapolis provided the occasion in which the Homeric poems were created. The number of cities, twelve, correlates strongly with the organization of the two poems. The twenty-four books in each poem break down into performance units of four books each. I will not repeat the detailed analysis of this structure, but point only to one such performance unit, Books 9–12 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus himself “performs” the tale of his adventures before his Phaeacian audience. Here is the ideal performance, consisting of four books. There are six such performance units in each poem, and thus there would have been twelve performances in all if the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed together in succession. There is in fact good reason to believe that the two poems were created in tandem and performed as a single entity divided into twelve performances of roughly equal length. [23]

§9. This model of the origin of the Homeric poems bears on the problem of Odyssey 24. On the one hand the sequence of four-book performances cannot well have ended with a stunted final performance of two and three-quarter books. The book divisions of the Iliad and the Odyssey are real in terms of performance, in that a book is a comfortable length for a single performer, and a four-book performance would thus have required four performers. [24] With ideally twelve performers coming from the twelve cities of the dodecapolis, each performer would thus have had four of the total forty-eight books to perform, though not in sequence. [25] It is thus my view that the termination of the Odyssey at 23.296 as reported by Aristophanes and Aristarchus cannot be referred to the poem as originally created at the Panionia. On the other hand, those who see our Odyssey of twenty-four books as genuinely Homeric, while their view squares with the clear structure of performance units, cannot in my model resort to a common explanation for what strikes many as the lower quality of Book 24, namely that the poet was tired or old by the time he came to the last book of the poem. [26] If the two Homeric poems were created by a process of regular repetition over a period of years, each four-book performance unit would have been on the same level as every other four-book performance unit, and none would have been allowed to fall far below grade.

§10. The Homeric poems, as I see them, were created at Panionion, where the festival of the Panionia was celebrated, [27] and were subsequently preserved, when performance at Panionion became untenable, offshore on Chios, in the guild of rhapsodes called the Homeridai. How the poems reached Athens is for me an open question, but the Homeridai most likely played a key role. In the time of Solon, at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth century BC, there is evidence that the Homeric poems were a serious matter in Athens. The wresting of Salamis from Megara, to which Solon devoted himself in his early career, has left its mark on the catalogue of ships, where Salamis under Telamonian Ajax has been made a virtual appendage of Athens. The Athenian entry to the catalogue of ships is a related example. Unlike all other entries to the catalogue, which list multiple towns per entry, Athens stands alone in its entry. The passage features the relationship between the city-goddess Athena and the hero Erechtheus, whose hero cult is clearly portrayed. Erechtheus died winning Eleusis for Athens in the heroic age, or so the myth would have it. In fact Eleusis was won not long before Salamis was won in Solon’s day, and the myth of Erechtheus was meant to cast this recent annexation back into heroic times. Only in the Athenian entry to the catalogue of ships is a hero cult directly attested in Homer. Everything, including such a hero cult, points to the conclusion that the Athenian entry does not go back to the Ionian poem of the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC, but has replaced an earlier version of this entry. The Ionian version would have listed multiple towns in Attica, as in all the other entries to the catalogue, and these towns would necessarily not have included still independent Eleusis. This absence may well have been the provocation for the replacement of this older version of the Athenian entry with a new version: the solution to the problem of a missing Eleusis was simply to ignore the convention of multiple towns and imply possession of Eleusis by the hero cult of Erechtheus. But if a missing Eleusis was the provocation for a new Athenian entry, there would also have been a deeper motivation, namely, to assert the new warlike nature of Athens and the new heroic stature accorded to Erechtheus. [28]

§11. Solon, who was alleged to have inserted the Salamis entry into the catalogue of ships, could also have inserted a new Athenian entry. Solon was thoroughly involved in the territorial expansion of Attica at the expense of its western neighbors as Athens became a more warlike state under his leadership. The tyrant Peisistratus, who was also alleged to have inserted the Salamis entry into the catalogue of ships, was more directly associated with an Athenian version of the Homeric poems in the form of the so-called Peisistratean recension. Herein lies another controversy, insofar as little is known in the way of content that was actually ascribed to the Peisistratean recension—three scattered lines and the change of a place-name in a fourth line—apart from one huge exception, namely all of Book 10 of the Iliad. [29] The scholia at the beginning of Book 10 state that this book was a separate work of Homer and that Peisistratus inserted it into the Iliad. This claim is dismissed by most, and I have my own further reason for not believing it: Book 10 is one of the 24 books of the Iliad, and as such it is a necessary part of the third performance unit of the poem, Books 9–12. While I do not take seriously the claim that Peisistratus collected scattered parts of the Iliad and assembled them into a single poem, I, like most, accept the role of Peisistratus’ son Hipparchus in regulating the performance of the Homeric poems at the Panathenaia, and in particular the Panathenaiac rule that the poems be performed in order. Previously, it would appear, rhapsodes had been free to choose whatever parts of the poems they wished as vehicles to display their talents, and it may well have been this that gave rise to the idea of a scattered text that needed to be reassembled. In fact there would have been no need of a Peisistratean recension for this purpose if the Ionian text of the poems had been safeguarded on the island of Chios since soon after the poems’ creation at Panionion. As I have said, I believe that this was the role of the Homeridai, the guild of rhapsodes that continued in existence on Chios long after the period of the poems’ creation.

§12. I turn now to a further Homeric text in which there is strong evidence of Athenian interference. As I have argued in detail, the catalogue of heroines in Odyssey 11 is the Athenian expansion of an original Ionian version which still remains intact inside the expanded Athenian version. [30] The original Ionian version, only half the length of the expanded Athenian version, is a highly structured bipartite catalogue focusing on the hero Nestor and his twin myth. In the original catalogue’s dual structure Neleus, the father of Nestor, leads off the first half of the catalogue, and Nestor leads off the second half. The Theban twins, Amphion and Zethos, follow Neleus and his twin brother Pelias in the first half of the catalogue, and the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, follow Nestor in the second half. Nestor’s twin myth is deliberately not made explicit—he is one of three sons of Neleus in his passage. His myth is instead made clear by his place in the catalogue’s structure. His juxtaposition with the Dioscuri is crucially important in this respect. Twins also occupy the third place on both sides of the catalogue—the Aloadai, Otos and Ephialtes, follow the Dioscuri in the second half of the catalogue, while Heracles and his virtually present twin (Iphicles) follow the Theban twins in the first half. Heracles’ twin Iphicles is not mentioned but is implied by mention of his mortal father Amphitryon, which distinguishes him from Heracles. [31] On both sides of the catalogue it is twins all the way down until a short two-line coda at the end of each side. The focus on Nestor’s twin myth in the catalogue of heroines is a matter I will not go into here. It has to do with his overall Homeric role, which is based on his twin myth, and his connection with the Phaeacian king Alcinous, who is modeled on Nestor.

§13. The balance between the two sides of the Ionian catalogue emerges clearly when three later insertions to each side of the catalogue are identified and removed. The last of these insertions, a passage naming three Athenian heroines, gives the game away, for Athenian myth, in general, plays no part in Homer. Two other passages inserted into the expanded catalogue have language indicating sixth-century Hesiodic catalogue poetry as their source, and this source also points to Athenian authorship. The longest insertion in the expanded version of the catalogue occurs in the middle of the catalogue’s first passage. Tyro, the mother of the twins Neleus and Pelias, did not have these sons by her husband, Kretheus, who gave her three other sons, who are named at the end of her entry. Tyro first fell in love with the river god Enipeus in her native Thessaly, and it was Enipeus who fathered the twins Neleus and Pelias in the Ionian version of the catalogue. In the Athenian version a fourteen-line passage follows Tyro’s falling in love with Enipeus, and in this passage Poseidon takes on the likeness of Enipeus and makes love to Tyro in Enipeus’ place. This change of paternity reveals the reason for the Athenian expansion of the catalogue. In the Ionian city of Miletus Enipeus was called Poseidon Enipeus, and when this minor river god appeared in his own right in the Ionian catalogue, he implied Poseidon’s presence as well. This would not have been the case in Athens, where it mattered to important people that Poseidon be clearly seen as the father of Neleus. The tyrant Peisistratus claimed descent from Neleus, and he traced this descent through Nestor and Nestor’s son Peisistratus, the companion of Telemachus in the Odyssey, and the Athenian tyrant’s namesake. In Ionia the royal family of Miletus were called the Neleids, “descendants of Neleus,” but they traced their origin, not to Nestor, but to Nestor’s brother Periclymenos. Claiming descent from Nestor through his various sons in Homer became a matter of aristocratic rivalry in Athens. The Alcmaeonids, opponents of the Peisistratids, claimed descent from Nestor’s son Thrasymedes, and the Paionids, allies of the Alcmaeonids, claimed descent from Antilochus. It appears that this sort of claim started early in Athens, at least on the part of Peisistratus’ family. After yearly archons replaced the Athenian monarchy in 683 BC one of the early archons, in 669/8 BC, was named Peisistratus, and he is taken to be the ancestor of the tyrant Peisistratus. [32] It was thus soon after the creation of the Homeric poems in Ionia that Athenians began imitating the kings of Miletus, whose name “the Neleids” spoke for itself in the matter of actual descent from Pylian Neleus, with their own pretensions of such descent. This implies early acquaintance with the Homeric poems in Athens, for the sons of Nestor, claimed as ancestors by the Athenian families, belong to these poems.

§14. The Athenian version of the catalogue of heroines is meant to make Poseidon overt as the divine ancestor of the Peisistratid family, something that was only implied for the Neleid family of Miletus in the catalogue’s Ionian version, where Enipeus was the overt ancestor. When Poseidon addresses Tyro after his act of love he says that she will bear him “glorious children,” aglaa tekna. The same phrase already occurred in the Ionian version of the catalogue to describe the children whom Chloris, Nestor’s mother, bore to Neleus. The Peisistratids would clearly have appreciated having that honorific phrase, which reflected on their pretensions, emphatically duplicated at the head of the expanded catalogue.

§15. The catalogue of heroines in Odyssey 11 has unique value in showing the difference between Homeric poetry in Ionia and the makeover of Homeric poetry in Athens. In the Ionian catalogue the passages in the catalogue’s two halves balance each other completely, decreasing progressively in length and ending with a two-line coda in each half. The catalogue’s two halves are the same length within a line, having 22 and 23 lines respectively. The Athenian remake did not fail to notice this carefully wrought balance, and took pains to add the same number of passages and the same number of lines to each half of the catalogue—three passages and 24 total lines to each half. But the result of this arithmetic precision was not to preserve the catalogue’s bipartite structure, but to obscure it beyond recognition, as proved by the lack of notice this bipartite structure has ever received in the expanded Athenian version which is our text.

§16. In fifth-century Athens Aeschylus’ Oresteia dramatized the problem of revenge killings repeated endlessly if left unchecked by the state. In the trilogy the killings are all in the same family so the problem is particularly acute. In the last play of the trilogy Erinyes, spirits of revenge for the slain Clytemnestra, pursue Orestes, who has sought Apollo’s protection in Delphi. Apollo, having purified Orestes of pollution, [33] does not try to appease these implacable spirits, but sends Orestes to Athens to supplicate the city-goddess Athena. Athena arranges to have Orestes tried for his mother’s murder before a citizen jury, where the Erinyes act as plaintiff against Orestes the defendant. When the jury splits evenly Athena decides the case in favor of Orestes, and she appeases the vengeful spirits by giving them a permanent home in Athens and making them guardians of the city’s prosperity. Thus the Erinyes are converted from their noxious pursuit of vengeance and are integrated into the city as beneficent spirts. Athena also makes the Council of the Areopagus, which has tried this homicide case, a permanent homicide court in the city. In their new home the Furies are called the Semnai, the “August Goddesses.” Their cult place was next to the Areopagus, and Aeschylus, in his mythic concentration of history, has linked the cult place of the Semnai with the homicide court on the Areopagus from the start.

§17. Earlier in Athenian history a notorious incident involved the Council of the Areopagus and the cult of the Semnai. Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch’s Life of Solon all refer to it. In the 630s BC the Athenian aristocrat Cylon attempted to make himself tyrant of Athens by seizing the Acropolis, but he and his party were trapped there by Athenian citizens. Cylon himself escaped but his followers, having taken refuge as suppliants at Athena’s altar or statue, were slowly being starved to death. The city archons persuaded the suppliants to leave on the understanding they would be tried but not put to death, but had them executed anyway once they left Athena’s protection. Some of the conspirators, Thucydides says, were executed at the altars of the Semnai, where they took refuge as they passed. Presumably the conspirators passed the sanctuary of the Semnai on their way to the Areopagus for trial. In Plutarch the episode is embellished with a colorful detail. The conspirators, before leaving Athena’s statue on the Acropolis, attached themselves to the statue with a thread to maintain contact with the goddess as they descended the Acropolis. But just as they passed the sanctuary of the Semnai the thread broke, indicating that Athena had refused her protection, and that they should be executed on the spot (Life of Solon 12.1).

§18. The murder of the Cylonian conspirators caused a prolonged civil and religious crisis. The archon held responsible for the murders was the Alcmaeonid Megacles, and according to Plutarch the ensuing conflict between the Alcmaeonids and the surviving Cylonians divided the people of Athens. Finally Solon persuaded the Alcmaeonids to stand trial, which ended with their exile. Although the Alcmaeonids in time returned to Athens, the Alcmaeonid curse remained a potent factor in Athenian politics. At the end of the sixth century the reformer Cleisthenes, an Alcmaeonid, was forced into exile by the Spartans when they called for the expulsion of those under the curse (tous enageas, Herodotus 5.72.1). In the run-up to the Peloponnesian war the Spartans again called for the expulsion of those under the curse (to agos), as they tried to undermine Pericles, an Alcmaeonid on his mother’s side (Thucydides 1.127.1), in his leadership of Athens.

§19. The Cylonian conspiracy and its aftermath unsettled Athens at the time of its occurrence and did not fade from memory thereafter. Aeschylus must have had that earlier period in mind when he took up the problem of reciprocal violence in his trilogy of 458 BC. The August Goddesses were at the center of the violation that took place in the murder of the Cylonian conspirators, and the Council of the Areopagus, which was meant to handle the problem of the guilty conspirators, was deprived of the chance to do so. All this is made right in Aeschylus’ drama about the house of Atreus. Aeschylus was possibly the first to equate the August Goddesses with the Furies pursuing Orestes. [34] His portrayal of them as resentful beings was perhaps inspired by the part they had once been given, when their altars were disastrously violated.

§20. The end of our Odyssey, in its concern with reciprocal violence, would fit the circumstances of sixth-century Athens. The conflict between the Alcmaeonids and the Cylonians began with the Cylonians clearly in the wrong in their attempt to seize control of the city and install their leader as tyrant, but blame shifted to the Alcmaeonids when Cylonians were treacherously murdered. In the Odyssey the suitors are represented as clearly in the wrong in their attempt to replace Odysseus in his own palace, but they are murdered in circumstances that could be seen as treachery undertaken by Odysseus. In seventh-century Athens the murders of the conspirators were followed by mutual reprisals. Plutarch uses the word stasis of the period, and he says that when the Alcmaeonids were finally banished, the bodies of their dead were dug up and thrown outside the country’s boundaries (Life of Solon 12.3). Victims’ graves were a focal point in instigating and perpetuating reciprocal violence—Solon’s funerary legislation dealt with this problem—and the Alcmaeonid graves in question would have belonged to victims in the conflict with the Cylonians. In our Odyssey no such vendetta can come about because Athena steps in to prevent it. This ending to the Odyssey, if it is in fact a sixth-century Athenian product, makes sense as a response to a contemporary situation. The new ending to the Odyssey attempts to put paid to a problem that roiled contemporary life.

§21. Before pursuing a more narrowly defined sixth-century context for the end of our Odyssey, there is the other side of the problem to consider first. If a new Athenian ending was given to the poem, what was the old ending that it replaced? This question of course cannot be answered, but it is still worth considering. A viable answer would have to arise out of the poem itself, and more than one possibility suggests itself. An interesting idea that Gregory Nagy suggested to me is that the poem might have ended with a festival of Apollo. Such a festival is already a feature of the poem, though only in the background. This festival takes place in the grove of Apollo on the very day that Odysseus strings the bow and kills the suitors. We hear of it first incidentally following an exchange between Antinous and Telemachus inside the palace (Odyssey 20.275–278): [35]

Later, when the suitor Eurymachus fails to string the bow and decries the shame if all the suitors should fail, Antinous counters his gloom with a remark on the festival taking place this day (Odyssey 21.256–260): [36]

It is of course on this day that Odysseus will string the bow, and Antinous has unwittingly set the stage for him to do so. Antinous’ question, who could string the bow on Apollo’s feast day, has an answer: Odysseus could, and will. There is further irony when Antinous sets the next day for the suitors to try the bow again: there will be no next day for the suitors. Antinous has it exactly wrong in what he says about stringing a bow on Apollo’s feast day. This is made clear in the event. Odysseus, after stringing the bow and sending an arrow through the axes, asks Apollo’s help in taking aim at Antinous (Odyssey 22.5–8): [37]

Apollo’s festival in the Odyssey is widely assumed to be that for the new moon, which, with other divisions of the month, was sacred to Apollo. The identification of the new moon festival rests on the word lukabas which the disguised Odysseus twice uses of his own impending return, speaking first to Eumaeus and then to Penelope (Odyssey 14.16l–162, 19.306–307): [38]

While both meaning and etymology are obscure for the word lukabas, it is clearly connected here with the interlunium, the dark of the moon: the hidden Odysseus will reappear like the moon after its three days in hiding. [39]

§22. Let us suppose that the Ionian Odyssey did end, not with Athena, but with Apollo. Would the ending have featured a continuation of the new moon festival? There is a problem with that. When the day of blood-filled archery ends with the reunion of Odysseus and Penelope in their marriage bed, the new moon festival, it would seem, is over. That is implied by Antinous’ words when he rejects Apollo’s festival day for any further attempts with the bow, and instead bids the suitors supplicate Apollo and try again the next day, when there will be, it would seem, no festival of Apollo to hinder them (Odyssey 21.263–68): [40]

It is apparently a private sacrifice for the archer god that Antinous envisions, and not a prolongation of the public festival, which has already been duly celebrated with a hecatomb. In the Ionian Odyssey was such a private sacrifice to Apollo perhaps carried out, not by the suitors as proposed by Antinous, as part of a vow to the god, but by Odysseus and his family in order to give the god thanks? Odysseus has not promised anything to Apollo in our Odyssey, but perhaps he did so in the Ionian Odyssey. Whether he did so or not, some recognition of Apollo’s help seems not out of place at the end of the poem. There is another point worth considering, and that is Apollo’s role in the purifying of pollution, but this too has problems. Murder in Homer is expiated by exile, as in the case of the seer Theoclymenus, [41] or less often by compensation, as in the litigation scene on the shield of Achilles, and not by purification. [42] Moreover there is no hint in the Odyssey that Odysseus has polluted himself in murdering the suitors. [43] Still, the possibility of purification should not be dismissed.

§23. I return now to the idea of a sixth-century Athenian knowing a different ending to the Odyssey from ours, and deciding to give the poem a new ending to reflect a problem of his own time. The reciprocal violence following the Cylonian conspiracy would have been the contemporary problem to be reflected in the new ending. Solon, who played an important part in dealing with this violence, and whose hand seems detectable in the Athenian entry to the catalogue of ships, could have been the new ending’s author. It could also have been the poet who remade the catalogue of heroines in Odyssey 11, although the motivation for a new ending to the poem is harder to see in the era of Peisistratus and his sons, in whose interest this catalogue was reworked. The problem of mutual violence was not as immediate as it had been in the era of Solon. If the Ionian Odyssey did end with Apollo rather than Athena, would that have been somehow unacceptable to the Peisistratids? The mutual hostility of Peisistratus and his family with Delphi is well known. This was the result of their hostility with the Alcmaeonids, who were enemies of the tyrants throughout the period of their tyranny. The Alcmaeonids gained great influence in Delphi when they lavishly rebuilt the temple of Apollo after its destruction by earthquake in 548 BC. Exiled from Athens by Peisistratus, the Alcmaeonids spent at least part of the period between 547 and 525 BC in Delphi, and later, in 510 BC, they were instrumental in driving the tyrants from Athens when they bribed the oracle to induce Sparta to support their cause. Hostility toward Delphi there was on the part of Peisistratus and his sons, but this did not mean hostility toward Apollo, nor does there seem to be any other reason for them to reject an ending of the Odyssey with Apollo in it. [44]

§24. For the ending of our Odyssey the era of Solon makes more sense than the era of Peisistratus. But even the immediacy of the problem of reciprocal violence in the Solonian era does not seem to account for the substitution of a new ending for an older ending, if that older ending was satisfactory. There must have been a more compelling reason in what the new ending replaced, as with the Athenian entry to the catalogue of ships, if the absence of Eleusis was the precipitating cause in that case. My suggestion in this case is that an Ionian ending with Apollo in it did in fact involve purification from pollution. If the Ionian Odyssey absolved Odysseus of all guilt for murder in a ceremony for Apollo, this was perhaps too one-sided a resolution for Athens to countenance in the aftermath of the Cylonian conspiracy. In his book Miasma Robert Parker argues that purification for murder may actually be implicit in Homer in certain scenes of supplication, and its apparent absence is therefore misleading. [45] If Apollo did purify Odysseus in some implicit way, the Odyssey would prefigure the Oresteia, where Apollo first instigates Orestes to kill his mother (Libation Bearers 269–295, 1029–1033) and then purifies him of the murder (Eumenides 280–283). In the Odyssey we have a clear sense of the archer god standing behind Odysseus as he kills the suitors. Did the poem end with Apollo also purifying Odysseus of those murders?

§25. Parker, expanding on his idea of implicit purification for murder in Homer, goes so far as to imagine the possibility of an explicit purification ceremony being conducted in some epic context by the likes of Nestor. [46] Nestor’s sacrifice to Poseidon in Odyssey 3 may have suggested the model. I do not imagine anything on that scale in Odyssey 24, but something smaller on behalf of Odysseus and his family, more like Nestor’s sacrifice to Athena in Odyssey 3. In such a sacrifice Odysseus’ father Laertes would also have had a part. The original Ionian ending of the Odyssey cannot have failed to reunite Odysseus with his father, and if the context was not an aborted battle with the suitors’ kin, could Laertes instead have conducted a sacrifice to Apollo on behalf of his now reunited family? Such a ceremony, conducted by an aged man for his family, would have balanced Nestor’s sacrifice to Athena in Odyssey 3, where Nestor recognizes the goddess flying off in bird form, and prays to her to be gracious to him and his family.

§26. To make sense of the claim made by not just one, but two Hellenistic scholars that the Odyssey once ended at Book 23 line 296, I propose that the Athenian reshaping of the end of the poem had two stages to it. The first and easiest way to deal with an ending of the poem that was no longer acceptable would have been to end the poem earlier, with the remarriage of Odysseus and Penelope, thus dispensing with the second Nekyia at the beginning of Book 24 as well as the problematic episode at the end of Book 24. The poem could have existed in this truncated form in Athens long enough to leave the trace of it that we find attested by Aristophanes and Aristarchus. When a new ending was subsequently composed to take the place of the old ending, it brought back with it the second Nekyia and the end of Book 23. Aristarchus, oddly enough, athetized both the second Nekyia and the passage near the end of Book 23 in which Odysseus recounts his adventures to Penelope. Why Aristarchus did so if he thought the poem ended earlier in Book 23 is part of the puzzle of the end of the Odyssey. We don’t know his reasons for the atheteses, but the mere fact that he made them shows that he had a more complicated view of the end of the poem than that it had once ended in Book 23. [47]

§27. Can we say more? The idea that the Odyssey composed and performed in Ionia in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC ended with Odysseus’ total exoneration for the blood shed in his palace will not sit well with those for whom the problem of reciprocal violence demanded more recognition than that. There is, however, a suggestive parallel for just such an outcome, and it is found, paradoxically, in sixth-century Athens. Theseus, the quintessential Athenian hero, became that hero in the course of the sixth century in myths that made him a kind of second Heracles. [48] Vanquishing robbers and monsters when he first made his way from Troezen to Athens he had to be purified of all the bloodshed before he could enter the city. [49] But Theseus slew not only foreign malefactors in imitation of Heracles. He also slew his own cousins when they plotted to seize his kingship, and for the shedding of their blood he was absolved specifically by Apollo. I suggest that when Theseus slew his cousins and was absolved by Apollo he did so in imitation of Odysseus— of Odysseus, that is, as absolved by Apollo for the murder of rivals for his kingship in an earlier ending of the Odyssey, which would still have been current in sixth-century Athens.

§28. Theseus entered Athens as an unknown stranger and was recognized by his father Aegeus through tokens that Aegeus had left for his unborn son years earlier in Troezen. Before Theseus’ appearance in Athens, Aegeus’ brother Pallas and Pallas’ fifty sons had expected to replace the apparently childless Aegeus in the kingship of Athens. When instead Theseus was recognized by Aegeus as his legitimate heir Pallas and his sons tried to seize the city and were slain by Theseus in an armed confrontation. [50] Theseus defended his legitimate right to rule, but in doing so he committed homicide, and in Athens there were courts to deal with homicide. Besides the Areopagus, which dealt with ordinary cases, there were two special courts which dealt, in one, with cases of unintentional homicide, and, in the other, with cases of intentional but justified homicide. The latter court, in which plaintiffs admitted that they had committed murder but claimed that the murder was justified, was held in the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios. [51] In Theseus’ myth it was this court that absolved him of guilt for the death of his cousins. Theseus had committed murder, but justified murder. [52]

§29. The parallel between the situations of Odysseus and Theseus is striking: both arrive incognito and both slay a band of rivals for their rightful place as king. [53] A further parallel, which goes to the heart of the question about an earlier ending to Book 24, lies in the recognition of the hero by his father through a token. In the case of Theseus it is the sword that Aegeus left with his unborn son that proves his son’s identity and allows him to become king. [54] In Odyssey 24 Odysseus proves his identity to his father by the token of the orchard, knowledge of which only the two of them share. But here Odysseus’ story differs from Theseus’, for Odysseus is already king, and his rivals have already been eliminated. The point of the hero’s recognition by his father should be the legitimate transfer of royal power, and this point, it would seem, has been lost in Book 24. But perhaps the point is not lost, but only attenuated, if allowance is made for a peculiar phenomenon of the Odyssey, namely the hero’s flexible age. In his father’s presence Odysseus becomes a boy again as he relives his boyhood experience of the orchard. This is not the first time that the Odyssey presents the hero as flexible in age. As Olga Levaniouk has shown, the poem presents Odysseus in relation to Penelope as a rejuvenated suitor who successfully wins his bride. This gives the pair’s reunion the feeling of a new marriage. [55] There is something similar when Odysseus becomes a boy again in the orchard with his father. Unlike Aegeus, Laertes is not king, but by the poetic alchemy of Odysseus’ flexible age Laertes is still the key to the legitimacy of Odysseus’ rule. Like Theseus, Odysseus is effectively anointed by his father. This, I suggest, would have been the point of their reunion at the end of the Odyssey as originally conceived. But Laertes’ role in Book 24 has been distorted by the battle with the suitors’ kinsmen, if that battle has replaced something else at the end of the book. The meal that the reunited father, son, and grandson sit down to is abruptly abandoned when news comes of the approaching foe. In my view nothing would be lost, and much would be gained, if that meal were instead a peaceful sacrifice of thanksgiving to Apollo, conducted by the eldest member of the family. [56] The sense that Odysseus has been reinstated as legitimate king of Ithaca would be greatly enhanced by such a scene.

§30. Our Book 24, while ostensibly honoring Laertes as the slayer of Eupeithes, the leader of the suitors’ kinsmen, has instead, in my view, seriously diminished his originally intended role. [57] To appreciate the scope of Laertes’ intended role I return to a point made earlier about the Iliad and the Odyssey as companion pieces from the time of their creation in Ionia. The interlocking narratives of Iliad 8 and Odyssey 3 are the main proof of this relationship, [58] but attention should also be drawn to a different kind of correspondence at the end of the two poems, namely the complementary roles played by the two aged fathers, Priam and Laertes. Just as the aged Priam is at the center of Iliad 24, the aged Laertes should be at the center of Odyssey 24, and their stories should be seen together: Priam’s tragic loss of Hector is pointedly reversed in Laertes’ joyful reunion with Odysseus. [59] The contrast between the two poems, one about war and death, the other about survival and peace, reaches an emotional high point in their contrasting pictures of the two old men. [60]

§31. The god who absolved Theseus is Apollo Delphinios. The fundamental study of this god by Fritz Graf identifies two main aspects of his cult: a close connection with the political life of the community worshiping him, and a close connection with the maturation of the male youth of this community. [61] In the story of Theseus, whose recognition by his father coincides with his coming of age, and who is ready to assume leadership of the state in his father’s place, both functions of the god are well illustrated. [62] Odysseus too is cast, at least poetically, as a maturing youth in Book 24, and he too is about to assume (i.e. reassume) the kingship of his city. As the archer god who backs Odysseus in the contest of the bow and the slaughter of the suitors, Apollo is a looming presence in the Odyssey, as he is in the story of Theseus. [63] If Apollo once played a role in Odyssey 24 which was eclipsed by a new ending to the poem, was he identified in the earlier ending, even if only implicitly, as Apollo Delphinios? Are there arguments to support the idea that in Odyssey 24 the reinvestiture of Odysseus as king of Ithaca took place under the auspices of this particular god? [64]

§32. An immediate question is whether it is necessary to narrow our focus to this one cult of Apollo. Exoneration for homicide, the problem of Odyssey 24, is also in the province of Pythian Apollo, at least as the Eumenides of Aeschylus represents it. [65] But it is Apollo Delphinios in particular who absolves Theseus of murder through his homicide court in Athens. [66] The function of sanctioning justified murder is not attested for the cult of Apollo Delphinios elsewhere, and Athens may have been unique in this. [67] But the cult must have offered the possibility that such a court would arise, and that possibility would seem to be connected with what Graf identified as a basic feature of Apollo Delphinios, the close connection of the god with the political life of the community worshiping him; the aition of the Athenian court notably involves the legitimate transfer of political power, from Aegeus to Theseus, and this aition should be given ample weight. The clearest example of the cult’s political aspect, as Graf notes, is to be found in the Ionian city of Miletus, where in historical times Apollo Delphinios oversaw the peaceful transfer of political power from one year to the next. [68] As I envision the last book of the Odyssey in its original Ionian form, the continuity of legitimate political power in Ithaca was its primary concern. If Apollo Delphinios had anything to do with this concern, so also must the city of Miletus. Miletus has been mentioned already in discussing the contrast between the Ionian version of the catalogue of heroines in Odyssey 11 and the Athenian expansion of this catalogue: the Ionian version clearly nods to Miletus. [69] The question now is how Miletus figures in the question of Apollo Delphinios in the Odyssey.

§33. In the post-regal period in Miletus the Delphinion was the main sanctuary of the college of Molpoi, the city’s governing body. The leader of the Molpoi, the aisymnētēs, [70] was the city’s annual eponym, an indication of the place of both the Molpoi and the Delphinion at the center of the city’s political life. [71] The Molpoi had replaced the king as leaders of the city when the monarchy ended, most likely in the early seventh century BC. [72] The circumstances that led to the change of government are known from fragments of two writers of the Augustan age, Conon, the author of diēgēseis, ‘narratives’, and the universal historian Nikolaos of Damascus. The last Neleid king of Miletus, Leodamas, became king in a contest with a kinsman, in which Leodamas prevailed by proving himself the greater benefactor of the city. [73] Leodamas went on to a popular and successful rule, but the instability that had occasioned the contest for the kingship in the first place became his undoing in the end when his unsuccessful kinsman, Amphitres, assassinated him and made himself tyrant of the city. Supporters of the slain Leodamas retaliated and killed Amphitres, and the people elected an aisymnētēs who proscribed or exiled Amphitres’ followers. [74] This brought the rule of the Neleid kings to an end and began the rule of the oligarchic Molpoi. [75]

§34. King Leodamas was slain while he was driving a sacred hecatomb for Apollo on a road outside the city. [76] We have a good idea of what the occasion was. In later times a yearly procession linked the sanctuary of Apollo Delphinios in Miletus with Apollo’s oracle and sanctuary in Didyma, eighteen kilometers south of the city. The procession demonstrated that Didyma belonged to Miletus, and this was doubtless its original purpose. [77] The procession is documented in great detail for a later period. An inscription of the Hellenistic era, datable probably to c.200 BC, reproduces the text of earlier versions of the inscription, the original portion going back to the Late Archaic period. [78] One of the features of the procession documented for this early date is a hecatomb driven from Miletus to Didyma and sacrificed there to Apollo. It cannot be proved that the procession originated in the royal period, but the archaeological evidence at least does not preclude this. [79] There is also a general likelihood that by the time of the last Neleid king Miletus was in full possession of its own territory.

§35. The procession from Miletus to Didyma came at the end of a four-day festival in Miletus in which new annual magistrates, including a new aisymnētēs, replaced the old. [80] The cult regulation that was originally composed in the Late Archaic period gives instructions for this festival and its associated transfer of political power. It is not known if the festival went back to the royal period, and at first glance it would seem that it did not, for there was no annual transfer of power in the royal period. But the point of the festival was perhaps not so much to transfer power as to reconfirm it. The Molpoi were a closed body with a permanent hold on power, and the change from the monarchy to the Molpoi only expanded the hold on power from an individual to a group. [81] A case for unbroken continuity in the festival might be made if in the royal period the festival was an annual reconfirmation of the king’s authority. Religious institutions are conservative, and it is easier to imagine a traditional festival being adapted to a new form of government at the end of the monarchy than a new festival being created ex nihilo at that time. [82] When Leodamas was struck down while driving the hecatomb for Apollo, had he just been reconfirmed as king in a springtime festival? [83] Not only would he have been particularly exposed to attack outside the city, but his rival would perhaps have been particularly incentivized by the ritual demonstration of his hold on power.

§36. This is a construction, but I think a plausible one. If Leodamas is imagined as being annually reconfirmed in power by a festival in honor of Apollo Delphinios, this has an immediate relevance to the Odyssey. I earlier described what I take to be the occasion for the genesis of the Homeric poems, namely the recurring celebration in the late eighth and early seventh centuries BC of the festival of the Panionia at the site known as Panionion. The poems arose, I argue, in conjunction with a political development, namely the formation of the Ionian dodecapolis, a league of twelve cities on the coast of Asia Minor and two off-shore islands. [84] The driving force behind the building of this Panionian community would have been the city of Miletus, which extended the myth of its own founding by an Athenian Neleid to the other cities of the dodecapolis, and made this myth the touchstone of other cities’ participation in the union. [85] The figure to be associated with this historical event is Leodamas, the last king of Miletus, and the evidence for this is in the Odyssey. In Books 9–12 of the Odyssey the internal audience for the hero’s tale, the Phaeacians, reflects the external audience for the Homeric poems at large. This fabulous people, which the Odyssey both creates and, after their part is played, removes, is the image of the Ionians themselves as they celebrated the Panionia and listened to the Homeric poems performed at the festival. The stages in the myth of the foundation of Miletus—the myth which was extended to the other cities of the dodecapolis—are Pylos, Athens, and Miletus, and all three stages are personified in the Phaeacian royal family. The key figure is the king, Alcinous, who is unmistakably modeled, in his function as “homebringer” and in his fictive genealogy, on the Pylian hero Nestor. [86] The Phaeacian queen, Arete, is identified with Athena Polias, the city goddess of Athens, when Athena assumes this form immediately after introducing her. [87] The names of the Phaeacian king and queen clearly evoke the figures standing behind them, Alkinoos, “he who brings home by his might,” evoking Nestōr, “he who brings home,” and Arētē, “she who is prayed to,” evoking Athena, the city goddess of Athens. The figure who represents the final stage in the foundation of Miletus, namely Miletus itself, is the royal prince, Laodamas. Laodamas, the future king, has little more to do in the story of the Odyssey than to show respect and deference to the stranger who has landed in his people’s midst, the hero of the story. In contrast to the names Alcinous and Arete, which speak for themselves in the story of the poem, his name Laodamas, “he who controls the people,” has to do with his role outside the story, as the future king. [88] Laodamas is the Homeric form of the name belonging to the last Neleid king of Miletus, Ionic Leōdamas. This choice of name cannot be accidental, given the names of all the other Phaeacians, which are uniformly significant, including the many that are only generically sea-related. [89] It is a unique honor for a living king to be represented in the Odyssey as the future king of the Phaeacians, the fabulous people who stand for all the Ionians of the dodecapolis. The honor bespeaks the role that this king presumably had in the formation of the dodecapolis and in the creation of the Homeric poems. [90]

§37. If the historical king Leodamas in fact celebrated an annual festival for Delphinian Apollo, the same festival known from later times, and if this festival each year reconfirmed his rule, it is easy to imagine a similar ritual at the end of Odyssey 24, insofar as it would have confirmed Odysseus in the kingship of Ithaca. But such a ritual in the Odyssey would not have identified itself explicitly with the main civic ritual of Miletus, or with the cult of Apollo Delphinios in Miletus, for that is not how such things go in Homer. The way that king Leodamas is present in the Odyssey and yet not actually present suggests how Apollo Delphinios, as worshiped in Miletus, might have been present and yet not actually present at the end of the poem. [91] It would have been a matter of suggestion rather than explicit reference. [92] One suggestive detail for the festival is already present in the Odyssey, and that is the time of year in which the festival for Apollo seems to take place in Book 20, namely spring. The festival for Apollo Delphinios in Miletus took place in the spring, and it marked the beginning of a new year; [93] it was when new magistrates began their year in office. [94] The time of year in the Odyssey is not definitely marked, but as Odysseus regains control of his kingdom spring birds begin to populate the narrative, [95] and in Book 24 Laertes is found, not in his wintertime hut, but in his orchard. [96]

§38. The maturation of male youth, a main concern of cults of Apollo Delphinios, may be another area of common concern with the Odyssey. The Molpoi decree uses the term neoi to refer to a class of male youths, apparently those who had ended their period as ephebes and were now “new” (but still unmarried) citizens. [97] The decree does not refer to the admission of a new yearly crop of neoi, [98] it does, however, regulate an event called the Hamillētēria, a ritual contest among the neoi. [99] In the Odyssey Telemachus seems to have reached this stage of life. When Penelope decides to hold the contest of the bow and remarry she acts on Odysseus’ words to her when he left for Troy, that if he did not return and she wished to remarry, she should do so when Telemachus became bearded. [100] Penelope decides to act on the day of Apollo’s festival, and this suggests that Telemachus, in terms of the festival at Miletus, would have been one of the year’s newly admitted neoi. [101]

§39. The case for a connection between the festival of Apollo Delphinios in Miletus and a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Apollo in Odyssey 24 would be stronger, if in addition to general points of connection with the Odyssey, Apollo Delphinios in Miletus had the same power to exonerate justified murderers as did Apollo Delphinios in Athens, but there is no evidence for this. [102] A sacrifice to Apollo by Odysseus to thank the god for help in the trial of the bow and the battle with the suitors, if the offering was accepted by the god, would have meant at least tacit exoneration for the killing of the suitors, and this would be a satisfactory ending to the story. The Theseus story also ends with a sacrifice to Apollo: after slaying his cousins, Theseus captures the Marathonian bull and drives it to the Delphinion, where he sacrifices it to the god. In Plutarch the capture of the Marathonian bull is presented as a heroic exploit, but the fact that the bull is sacrificed to Apollo Delphinios deserves emphasis. [103] Plutarch omits the exoneration of Theseus by the Delphinion court for the killing of his cousins; he perhaps follows a version of the myth in which exoneration was implied in the god’s acceptance of the offering of the bull. [104] Theseus’ heroic exploit of course had no counterpart in the ending of the Odyssey, but the significant parallel may have been simply a sacrifice of thanksgiving to Apollo.

§40. If the Odyssey originally ended as here proposed, with no thought given to the suitors beyond their righteous death, the circumstances in seventh-century Athens which would have occasioned an ending different from this, the ending that replaced it, have been explored: in c.630 BC the Cylonian conspirators acted like the suitors insofar as they tried but failed to install themselves in a position of power not rightfully theirs; the brutal execution of the conspirators that followed led to mutual reprisals, and finally to the banishment of those held responsible for the executions, the Alcmaeonids. This situation was not entertained by the original Odyssey, but is expressly entertained by its new ending. Later, in sixth-century Athens, when Theseus became the quintessential Athenian hero, there must have been a parallel tradition of performance that continued to feature the original ending of the Odyssey, if, as proposed here, Theseus’ justified killing of his rivals was an imitation of Odysseus’ justified killing of the suitors. What were the circumstances in sixth-century Athens that reflected this older unconcern with the problem of vendetta at the end of the Odyssey?

§41. According to Athenian myth Theseus’ great political deed was the unification of Attica, his synoikismos. [105] Two generations before Theseus, king Pandion had divided the kingdom into four parts and left each of his four sons a part. Theseus’ father Aegeus received the city of Athens and the adjacent plain. The three other parts of the kingdom were the shore (paralia), the eastern upland district (diakria), and Megara, which still belonged to Athens according to this myth. [106] The matching of these three regions with the three other sons of Pandion is clear in the case of Megara, which went to Nisus, and the eastern upland district, which went to Lycus, but is less clear for the shore. Pallas received the shore according to two Aristophanic scholia, [107] but Pallas, “rather awkwardly,” was also the eponym of an inland deme, namely Pallene; [108] a fragment of Sophocles also seems to point to Pallene as Pallas’ share. [109] In the sixth century the shore (paralia) was the territory of the Alcmaeonids at the time of the well-known three-party strife first attested for c.560 BC, when Peisistratus became tyrant of the city. [110] The other two regions involved in this strife were the plain (pedion: Athens and its adjacent plain), and the eastern upland district of Attica (diakria). [111] These three regions match the four regions in the myth of Pandion’s sons minus Megara, since become Dorian. [112] The shore, the home of the Alcmaeonidae, seems to have been equated, with some evident strain, with the territory of the rebellious Pallantidai. The three-party conflict originated between only two of the parties, the pedion and the paralia, before Peisistratus championed the diakria and made himself tyrant in c. 560. [113] At the head of the paralia in this period was the Alcmaeonid Megacles, the grandson of Megacles the archon of 632/1 BC, who had been exiled in the aftermath of the Cylonian conspiracy. The pedion was led by Lycurgus, a presumed member of the Eteoboutads, the family that provided the city’s most important priesthoods, those of Poseidon Erechtheus and Athena Polias, and to which the fourth-century orator Lycurgus belonged. [114] The conflict between the party of the plain and the party of the shore, which abated once Peisistratus became tyrant and party alignments shifted, [115] accounts quite well for the myth of Theseus’ battle with the Pallantidai and his exoneration for their murder: those in control of Athens, the party of the plain, are in effect equated with Aegeus and Theseus in their conflict with the Pallantidai; the court that exonerated Theseus for killing his rebellious cousins was in Athens, in Aegeus’ own place of residence, and thus under the party of the plain’s control. The myth, understood in this way, belonged not to the Alcmaeonids, but to the Alcmaeonids’ rivals. The myth of Theseus’ unification of Attica can be seen in the same light, as the goal more than the accomplished fact of those in control of the city of Athens during the period of regional rivalry when the myth arose. [116]

§42. In sixth-century Athens two endings to the Odyssey were current, the original Ionian ending, which simply celebrated Odysseus’ victory over his foes and his just reclaiming of the kingship, and an alternative ending, composed in Athens in the late seventh century, which complicated Odysseus’ victory with the need to take account of the threat of vendetta. The original ending, having the prestige of tradition, would have continued in circulation until it was finally excluded in the Athenian state text, which could only accommodate one ending. If this is in fact what happened, it is interesting to note that the Peisistratids, who controlled the state text for performance at the Panathenaia, chose the Athenian version, with Athena rather than Apollo bringing down the curtain. [117] Peisistratus’ own claim to have Athena as his special protector is well known, as is the relationship of his enemies, the Alcmaeonids, with Apollo in Delphi. Possibly these factors weighed if a choice of endings was made. At the time of the Cylonian conspiracy the Alcmaeonids would have been content to see themselves in the light of the Odyssey’s only ending at that time, the original Ionian ending. Megacles, the Alcmaeonid, dealt with the conspirators as Odysseus had dealt with the suitors, and for Odysseus all had come out well. But as things turned out life did not imitate art in the case of Megacles.

§43. Odysseus returns at the dark of the moon. The festival of Apollo being celebrated when he reveals himself and regains his kingdom is thus a new-moon festival. The season is spring, and the new moon, marking the restoration of Odysseus’ kingship, also marks the beginning of a new year. In contemporary Miletus the king’s power would also have been ritually renewed at the start of the new year, in the spring, if post-royal Miletus is a guide; there rituals from the seventh to the ninth of Taureon, the first month of the year, marked the transfer of political power from one set of annual magistrates to the next. The Molpoi inscription, which regulates the new year festival, includes no new-moon festival to mark the start of the year, and this seems anomalous. The inscription also does not regulate the admission of new citizens, the neoi, which must have taken place in Taureon, but it is unclear when. [118] On the tenth of Taureon the new citizens had already been admitted, [119] and while the seventh–ninth of Taureon cannot be ruled out, the new-moon festival on the first of Taureon seems the likely occasion for their admission. [120] The Odyssey would be consistent with this insofar as Penelope’s decision to remarry coincides with the new-moon festival in Ithaca, and the reason for her decision is evidently that Telemachus has reached the age to become a new citizen.

§44. There is no doubt that Odysseus returns with the new moon. But the word used to designate the new moon is not a perspicuous term like noumēnia, “new month,” but the oracular-sounding lukabas. This word, which in Homer is accompanied by a gloss to explain it, is far from perspicuous in terms of etymology, or even meaning. To conclude this study, which by the nature of its subject has been speculative, speculation on this dark word seems not inappropriate, and the place to start is the meaning of lukabas in Homer, namely “dark of the moon.” In its few occurrences in later Greek, mostly poetic and oracular in context, lukabas means “year.” In the Odyssey lukabas could mean “year,” but this would rob the disguised Odysseus’ prophecy of its urgency: returning “this very year, at the end of one month and the beginning of another,” would mean a possible wait of up to a year for Odysseus to appear. It is generally agreed that context requires τοῦδ’ αὐτοῦ λυκάβαντος to mean “at this very new moon,” as is made clear in the line following, which is in fact a gloss. [121]

§45. Λυκάβας appears to be a compound, the first element of which, λυκα-, looks like either a word for “light,” λύκη [122] , or the word for “wolf,” λύκος, but neither word ends in short α; the compound’s second element, -βας, suggests the verb βαίνω, “to go,” but -βατης, not -βας, is the form this element should have. The best attempt to overcome these formal difficulties takes -βας as an aorist participle of βαίνω, and posits an originally accusative phrase *λύκα βάντα, in which λύκα is an otherwise unattested noun *luk-, “light,” in the accusative singular masculine, and the phrase *λύκα βάντα would be parallel to the frequent Homeric phrase ἐς ἠέλιον καταδύντα, “until the sun having set, until sunset.” When the noun *luk-, “light,” fell out of existence, the two words would have been taken together as one, λυκάβαντα, which could then be used in other cases. [123]

§46. While this etymology as “the light having gone” clearly connects lukabas with the “dark of the moon,” the expression is not as specific in designating the phenomenon in question as the expression “the sun having set” is in designating “sunset,” nor is the usefulness of an accusative expression for “dark of the moon” as clear as it is in the case of “sunset.” [124] The existence of a noun *luk-, “light,” is also precarious, although the case for it has been ingeniously supported. [125] While better than other attempts at an etymology for λυκάβας, this one too seems fragile, and the way is thus open to try something new. [126] My own suggestion is to take the notion of “light having gone” as a folk etymological interpretation of a different word that has been deformed by a metathesis of its first two syllables, from *καλύβας to λυκάβας, where *καλύβας would contain the root of καλύπτω, “hide, conceal,” and designate the “dark of the moon” directly; the proposed process of taboo deformation would replace the notion of “dark” in *καλύβας with the notion of “light” in λυκάβας, the “dark of the moon” being a perilous time and not to be spoken of directly. The last consonant of the stem of the verb καλύπτω is a bilabial stop which varies, either -π-, -β-; or -φ-; [127] there are derivatives in which the stem ends in either -β- or -φ-, the main instance of the former being καλύβη, “cabin, hut.” [128] For a suffix -αντ- added to the verbal stem καλυβ- compare such forms as ἀκάμας, “untiring” (verb κάμνω) and ἀδάμας, “steel” (verb δάμνημι), and also, apparently, the Homeric plural noun τάλαντα, “plates of a balance” (verb “to bear”). [129] For the sense of darkness appropriate to the new moon *καλύβας can be compared with the Homeric verb καλύπτω in such phrases in the Iliad as τὸν δὲ σκότος ὄσσε κάλυψεν; τὸν δὲ κατ’ ὀφθαλμῶν ἐρεβεννὴ νὺξ ἐκάλυψεν; τὼ δέ οἱ ὄσσε / νὺξ ἐκάλυψε μέλαινα; τὼ δ’ αὖθι τέλος θανάτοιο κάλυψεν. [130] The sense that the moon dies at the new moon is inherent in the verb used of the moon’s waning, namely φθίνω, “to waste away, perish,” and death is likewise the dominant context of Homeric καλύπτω. [131]

§47. I have no close parallels for the proposed process of taboo deformation, but a change in the order of syllables to yield a new and unexpected meaning is perhaps a linguistic universal. [132] There may be another approach to the specific possibility of a noun *καλύβας lying behind λυκάβας in the Odyssey. When Odysseus tests his father in Odyssey 24 he claims to be from a place called Alybas: εἰμὶ μὲν ἐξ Ἀλύβαντος, ὅθι κλυτὰ δώματα ναίω (24.304). No place of this name is known, and this sets it apart from other places in Odysseus’ lies, which are purposefully set in the real world. [133] Can we detect in ἐξ Ἀλύβαντος an underlying form *ἐκ Καλύβαντος? The loss of the initial consonant in Ἀλύβαντος would be another case of taboo deformation, *Kalybas, “Dark of the Moon,” designating in this case a place somewhere in the unknown expanse of the western sea. [134] This would be an ominous place for Odysseus to have last been seen five years earlier, however good the omens were at his departure. [135] The suggestion of “wandering” in the deformed name Alybas would be less ominous, if wandering is what this name is meant to suggest. [136] I again have no exact parallel for the proposed taboo deformation. [137]